


The pieces all fold in on each other

by Dipenates



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Team as Family, survivor conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 14:29:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10388841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dipenates/pseuds/Dipenates
Summary: He felt, impossibly, even more tired, the lassitude stealing over his arms and legs. Papers and folders and briefings and Top Secret was the reason they were there. Pepper had prepared him charts and ordered his schematics, and he would have to talk the group of spooks and generals through the new tech Stark Industries wanted to sell them. It was business as usual, something he had done a hundred times, but he suddenly felt as though he couldn’t do it, that he wanted to carry on running until he was back on the plane home.Or five times Tony Stark didn't want to talk about it, and one time he did.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please note the tags and warnings. More comprehensive content notes are at the end. Rape/non-con is warned for as a theme. All sexual violence happens off-screen, and in the past.

**/1/ July, New York**

It had been in his calendar for six weeks. It slotted in next to a code review that Pepper had co-ordinated with the fourteen different sites that needed to take part. He was proud that his finger only trembled slightly before he tapped that entry open and declined the invitation. He was even prouder that he gave five seconds thought to the assistant who would be tasked with finding a new date and time.

Six weeks.

Six weeks to pick at the notion like a scab, and come up with a plan. Six weeks to skim over idea after idea for getting out of it. _Double-booking. Fire alarm. Mock invasion of alien forces. Ringing the opening bell._

Six weeks of sweaty sheets and headaches, despite the chill of the air-conditioning. Six weeks of thanking a pantheon of deities that Clint Barton was going to spend every day between now and then on the other side of the world on a mission that Coulson wouldn’t tell him anything about. Six weeks of trying to style it out right under Pepper’s nose.

It was in Room-SP305. Pepper had hired a team of architects that had won awards all over the world for creating workspaces. Their website promised the kind of sleek, hushed corporate minimalism that cost a lot of money. He had been impatient when he met with them, almost snappish with the desire to get back to his work, and the end result was something that felt a few degrees off.

He sat in Room-SP305, trying not to tap his fingers on the long, gleaming recycled table, and felt his plan lurch queasily in his stomach. A bottle of Lagavulin – the 16 year old because this was a functional hangover and not to be savoured - had seemed like a thing. Enough to create some distance between his pounding head and this morning’s briefing. Something to provide some cover if he was pale or sweating. He cracked a small, internal, irony-laden smile at the way that he’d been dragged, literally kicking and screaming sometimes, towards at least knowing that much about himself.

“Tony?”

“Hmm?” He hadn’t noticed that Coulson had arrived, footsteps soft on the oyster-coloured carpeting. Had fired up his slidedeck, even, and was trying to hand him a packet of information.

He took it. His hands were steady.

“Thanks.” The paper wasn’t warm, wasn’t cool.

“Morning.” Banner sat down, beside him. Put his commuter coffee cup on the table. The table was large, and the chairs weren’t close together, but he felt the displaced air move across the skin of his arms.

“Morning.” He pulled his sleeves down. Cotton. Soft with washing.

Coulson watched him for a whole extra beat. Not smiling. Not _not_ smiling.

He leaned across the table and grabbed a jug of water from one of the trays lining the centre. Cool and slightly damp under his fingers. The Sustainability Committee had recommended that the bottles of mineral water be replaced with these, as though his consumption of Coltan hadn’t singlehandedly destabilised at least two central African countries. He poured the water into his glass, the stream steady and satisfyingly loud.

“Hey,” said Clint, easing into the seat on his other side, wearing post-mission-medical sweats and a strip of surgical tape down one cheek. Tony hadn’t heard him come in, either.

He bit back that thought and cocked the jug at Clint. Barton, really, during working hours, although the softness in his eyes of _good to see you_ and _glad to be back_ was making it harder than usual to draw that line. He smiled back, and the muscles in his face hadn’t felt as stiff as he’d thought they would.

“Sure,” Clint nodded at the jug, and then frowned down at the packet of papers that Coulson had given him. Slid his finger under the flap, and tore it neatly open. Pulled out the cardboard folder inside.

He filled Clint’s glass. Then Banner’s.

“Are we expecting the others?” Banner asked, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Thor? Rogers?”

Tony watched Coulson shake his head. “They’ll be required to cover the material, but Fury and I both agree that we may need to frame it in a different way. Both Asgard and the 1940s had a different take on rape and masculinity.”

He’d been expecting the word to sting, to abrade his skin, to liquefy his guts. It thudded in the middle of his chest, and fizzed along his legs. He could deal with that. He relaxed the muscles in his arms, microscopically.

“Makes sense,” Banner said, squinting as he flipped through the pages in his packet.

Clint, arms on the table, non-writing hand clenched into a loose fist, nodded.

Coulson turned to look at the screen, at the words _Male rape as an interrogation tool: Medical, operative, and command responses in the field,_ flickering almost imperceptibly underneath the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo. He turned back to them.

“Shall we begin?” He paused. “Tony?”

“Yeah.” Tony couldn’t read his expression. He sat up straighter in his chair. “Sure.”

 

**/2/ September, New York**

A year after they’d first kissed, loose limbed and open-mouthed, in the corridor between the space serving as the green room and the ballroom at one in a long line of receptions the Avengers were invited to, Clint had let Tony in on his post-mission routine.

It hadn’t been Tony’s fault that he’d imagined it all wrong. It hadn’t been Clint’s fault that he’d imagined it all wrong. Tony had just pictured Clint tearing off his tac vest, throwing his quiver into the corner of a room, and Tony folding to his knees like a one-man, cocksucking, ticker-tape parade.

He’d avoided Clint coming off mission. Had always had a place to be, and people to see until Clint had been back a few days. Until this latest of Clint’s missions finished early, and he’d literally bumped into him outside the door to Clint’s space. Found himself standing in Clint’s apartment staring at two sofas pushed together, lined with blankets, and _Parks and Recreation_ paused on the TV screen. Clint was still, hands by his sides, in his pyjama pants and long-sleeved shirt and woollen socks, and if his expression wasn’t completely inscrutable then it was only because Tony knew him a little by now, thank you very much.

“It’s like a nest.”

Clint huffed a small piece of a laugh. “You know, people can really take that bird metaphor thing too far.”

“I’m people?” He blinked.

“Well you’re my person.” One corner of Clint’s mouth turned up. “If you want to be.”

Tony looked at him. Looked back at the blankets.

“They look soft,” he said, and hadn’t really meant to. “I mean—.” He stopped, unsure. Looked at Clint.

“I like soft when I’m off mission,” Clint said. “Well,” he amended, “I like soft blankets all of the time, but especially when I’m off mission.”

“Oh,” said Tony, and thoughts about Clint’s childhood and his childhood and being home from school sick slipped through his head too quickly to catch hold of.

Clint shifted his weight. “You can get in, if you want.” He gestured to the sofas, to the blankets.

“Okay,” said Tony. He climbed over the arms of one of the sofas, steadied himself against its back, and sat down. Clint joined him, and pulled one of the blankets up over them. 

“What do you like?” Clint asked. “When you get back from wherever.”

“Scotch,” said Tony, feeling the warmth of the wool against his arms. The heat radiating from Clint. “Or a dirty martini. As long as it’s dry.” He paused, his chest aching. He resisted the temptation to press on it, hard. “And comes with an Ativan-Klonopin-Xanax chaser.”

Clint turned his head to look at him, his hair rustling against the sofa. “That’s a lot of pills.”

Tony shrugged. Clint took his hand, threaded his fingers through Tony’s. He could feel the jump of Clint’s pulse at his wrist.  

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” It wasn’t exactly the truth. Wasn’t exactly a lie.

Clint was quiet for a moment. “Did you start taking them after Afghanistan?”

Tony pressed his lips together through a spasm of fear, a rush of something that moved like a shock across the back of his skull. He heard a clock tick. Clint’s hand was still warm in his. He brushed the leather of the sofa with the fingertips of his other hand. Cool. Smooth.

“You’re safe,” Clint said, as matter-of-factly as if he’d been talking about the Mets. “You’re here in New York, and you’re safe.”

He sat up straighter. Blinked. “I, uh—.” He rubbed his eyes. The air was cooler on his hand outside the blanket. “I couldn’t make my head shut up. After. I couldn’t—. I just—.”

He felt Clint’s eyes on him. It wasn’t much of an explanation. Wasn’t much of a description of the days and weeks he spent lying in the dark with his brain in freefall, scrabbling for purchase against the gusts of terror.

“Whatever works, right?” Clint squeezed his hand. Stretched out the leg nearest Tony so it was warm and solid against him. “Whatever helps balance you out.”

“I don’t—.” Tony stopped. Clint rubbed circles on his hand with his thumb. “I don’t know if balanced is really the right—.”

He swallowed down the thought of the dreams. On a platform without his suit, getting higher and higher while it got smaller and smaller, until it collapsed under him and he plummeted out of the sky. Floating on the sea, creatures swimming beneath him, until the flimsy surface dissipated under his feet and he fell into the inky, merciless water.

“We’ll get there.” Clint rested one hand on Tony’s stomach, warm and steady. “It’s okay.”

 

**/3/ October, Paris**

He woke up with a gasp like a rake going through gravel, and mentally kicked himself in the face for it. He listened, hard, half sitting up in the soupy blackness, but he couldn’t hear anything moving. Or breathing.  He sat up straighter, rustling the duvet.

“Jarvis?” he whispered. But that wasn’t right. He wasn’t at the Tower. Jarvis would have brought the lights up. Would have done something.

He fumbled for a light switch, hands shaking. Found one lying flush with the frame of the bed. Pressed it.

He was lying in a smallish bed in a room built for heavy traffic. Functional. Built-in furniture. No windows. The DGSE building in Paris.

He took a shaky breath. Felt the backwash of panic tug at his guts, and the neck of his shirt catch wetly on his skin. He put his fingers to his collarbone, and his skin was slick with sweat. He took another breath.

There were white bars of Xanax serried on the part of the bedframe that served as a nightstand. He picked up two. Snapped them in half. Dry swallowed the four pieces. He could hear his pulse thudding. He wanted Clint.

He looked at his watch. 0556. A kick in the pants away from midnight where Clint was. He would probably be awake.

He took another breath. Made a decision.

The guy staffing the front desk at the Directorate-General for External Security hadn’t wanted him to leave. Tony could see his point. He and Romanoff and Coulson were, after all, only staying right there at headquarters because the discussions they were having about anti-terrorism weren’t exactly for publication in Le Monde.

He didn’t know if the jittering under his skin was obvious to the desk officer, or if the guy just didn’t want to argue with an important supplier, but he eventually let him past. Told him how to get back into the building, and even suggested a route for his run.

Tony ran down the boulevard Mortier, towards Pere Lachaise. His stride was even, and the mid-October air was cool on his skin and in his lungs. It was dark, and the streets were still damp from being washed. The city’s pulse had slowed. Even the club kids were walking home, smoking cigarettes as they rode out the end of their buzz. His running shoes yupped against the watery tarmac. Something inside him shifted, unwound, stilled.

Pere Lachaise was in darkness behind its stone walls. He wasn’t someone who was creeped out by cemeteries, by death spread out like a layer of marzipan under the soil, but he still startled more than the regular amount when a figure dropped down just in front of him.

“Fuck!” he said, taking three steps into the road, arms coming up in front of him reflexively. And then, “Romanoff?”

She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt back, so he could see her hair in the yellowish glare of the streetlights.

“Sorry.” She was half-smiling, impenitent. “I saw you coming and couldn’t resist.”

He put his hands on his hips. Felt blood rush in his ears. “What were you doing in there?”

“Visiting an old friend.” One eyebrow flickered at the liquid darkness behind her. “You?”

He glanced at the wall. “I’m sorry.”

“It is as it is.” She lifted one shoulder. “And you haven’t answered my question.”

She wore her implacability in her stance. She wasn’t granite, Romanoff. She liked practical jokes, and reading pop-culture blogs, and singing along to country songs at the top of her voice while she polished her nails. She liked watching three-tissue weepies with Clint in his nest of blankets. The knowing kindness that she showed to Clint had been unexpectedly, if tentatively, extended to him. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, approaching terseness. She could sleep almost anywere. He’d seen her curl up in dank outhouses while enemies exchanged fire outside. Nap through turbulence on a QuinJet flight that had made Clint’s knuckles turn white. Sleep in a climbing harness suspended from a cliff-face in sub-zero temperatures.  

“We should get back.” She didn’t take her eyes away from his. “The meeting.”

He felt, impossibly, even more tired, the lassitude stealing over his arms and legs. Papers and folders and briefings and Top Secret was the reason they were there. Pepper had prepared him charts and ordered his schematics, and he would have to talk the group of spooks and generals through the new tech Stark Industries wanted to sell them. It was business as usual, something he had done a hundred times, but he suddenly felt as though he couldn’t do it, that he wanted to carry on running until he was back on the plane home.  

Romanoff was still watching him. “Yeah,” he said. “The meeting.”

She nudged his running shoe with her toe. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee on the way.”

 

**/4/ November, New York**

Tony wasn’t a huge fan of television. He thought most of it was formulaic, predictable, and full of people speaking irritatingly slowly. It was unusual for him to get to the end of an episode without having started to read or flick at things on his StarkPad. He did like _The West Wing,_ though. And _Sports Night_. In a rare moment of what he later realised was unwitting self-disclosure, he had shared with his therapist that he liked shows where people constructed a found family from their colleagues.

The reality of having the rest of the Avengers around wasn’t quite like _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. They were all too scuffed around the edges. Too used to their own ways of doing things, their own looping rhythms. Too self-protective.

The arrival of so many military personnel had necessitated a cavernous mess, which despite Pepper’s best attempts to muffle the sounds, still boomed and clattered. The Avengers had kitchens in the individual living spaces that she had carefully created for them, but she’d also found time to try and make somewhere they could be together. She had installed a communal kitchen near to the rooms in Stark Tower they used for planning missions. It was sleekly full of gleaming appliances, but even if they were toughened to withstand the casual strength of superheroes, they were on a domestic scale. Some of the legion of unseen Stark staff made sure that the stainless steel fridge was stocked with soup and deli. There were always fresh juices in jugs on the countertop, a cornucopia of fresh breads in baskets on the table, and hovering over everything the clean smell of rich coffee.

It was Coulson and Rogers that had formed the foundation of their lunch club. Every day when they weren’t out on mission, they met for a half-debrief half-history lesson that Tony called 21st Century 101. Coulson showed Steve film clips on the gigantic screen that almost filled one wall, and provided a succinct summary of the geopolitical and military ramifications of the events that Rogers had lived through in stasis.

Slowly, the others had started hovering around the edge of the sessions. Making sandwiches. Drinking their coffee, leaning against the kitchen counter. Partly listening and partly contemplating whatever they had been working on that morning.

Romanoff stretched her legs and waited for the toaster to pop up a bagel. Banner tapped his pen on the legal pad he’d brought with him from the lab, an apple juice at his elbow. Tony liked to sit at one end of the corduroy corner sofa, with his feet on the sleek oak coffee table and his StarkPad propped on his knee. Almost part of Coulson and Rogers’ thing but not quite.

Tony was reading something on TMZ on what Pete Wentz thought about Miley Cyrus when he realised at the edge of his perception that Banner’s pen had stilled against his legal pad. He slanted a glance at the TV screen. Prisoners. Naked in a pyramid with hoods over their heads. Abu Ghraib.

He leaned forward. Chose an apple from the oversized, modernist fruit bowl. It was hard under his fingers. Smooth and a little bit waxy.

Rogers’ face was solemn and open next to Coulson’s. A small part of Tony had been surprised at the ease with which Rogers took in the mendacity of the United States. He’d thrown up, as efficiently as he did everything, when Coulson told him about My Lai, but he hadn’t been _surprised_ exactly.

“Did they sexually assault the prisoners?” he asked. “As part of the torture?”

“Yes,” Coulson said, simply. “They did.” He flipped several pages over in his briefing book.

Tony’s stomach lurched. He could feel bile rising. Not in his throat yet, but not far off it. 

Rogers nodded, firmly. Made a note in pencil in his composition book. “Were they court-martialled?”

“Some.” Coulson shifted on the sofa, and handed Rogers an article from a buff folder. “They—“

There was a buzzing in Tony’s ears. He brushed his fingertips over his jeans. Rough. Warm, from his skin underneath. He could smell the faintest whisper of the fabric softener that Pepper liked. Coulson’s voice sounded like it was coming from underwater, a wave of sound and rhythm.

“I don’t understand,” Rogers said, sharply. “I mean, it’s wrong obviously, but also stupid. Stories get out. This must have been a recruitment field day for Al Qaeda.”

Tony felt like he was being tugged towards the ceiling. He clutched the apple. Smooth. Firm under his fingers. He looked at it. Red, but not like a big, cartoonish apple with cotton inside. Red like a blush on green skin. He poked his nail into it, exposing a half moon of milky flesh.

“Tony?” Coulson was looking at him. Unaccountably, Rogers wasn’t sitting next to him on the sofa anymore. He turned round. Rogers had opened the fridge door and was lifting out a metal tray of cold cuts. His composition book was sitting on the counter. Banner had gone, somehow, and Romanoff was absorbed by her magazine. He turned back to Coulson.

“Yeah?” His voice was thick. He cleared his throat.

“Everything okay?” Coulson was watching him now, intent and focused. 

He dug the edge of his nail into the side of his hand, and looked down at his StarkPad. Attempted a grin. It felt stiff. “Just thinking about Miley Cyrus.”

 

**/5/ November, New York  
**

He came back from the bathroom  - he always left it too long to pee, but it was so boring to have to stop work and take care of bodily functions - and Banner was leaning against the workbench in the middle of the room. It was late, Tony knew. The lights in the lab had dimmed, in the way that they did when JARVIS was trying to nudge him towards dinner.

Of all the people he’d ever worked with, or near, Banner was one of his favourites. He was smart, resourceful, and not alarmed by the extent to which Tony was absorbed and driven by his work. They were all, Tony thought, a little bit fanatical about being the best that they could be. He felt a ghost of apprehension that he couldn’t pin down at Banner being there, tilted coolly against the bench.

Banner was looking at the formula that spanned the glassboard. “What is it?”

Tony bent down towards the fridge near the door. He didn’t want dinner, not with that grubby itch still hovering beneath his skin. “Want a beer?”

Banner looked at him. Tony held out the bottle, shrugged. “It’s non-alcoholic.”

Banner took the bottle. Read the label. Opened it, took a sip, and then a longer one. Rolled the beer around his mouth as if he was remembering something. “Thanks.”

Tony shrugged again, and twisted the lid off his own bottle of Sam Adams. Tipped it towards his mouth and felt the bubbles pop sourly against his tongue.

“What is it?” Banner asked again, gesturing at the glassboard.

“Haven’t seen you around today.” He cradled his beer against his chest, making his shirt damp. “Thought you were maybe out in the field somewhere.”

“I’ve been writing some code in the Cupboard of Awesome.” Banner looked at him. “Are you going to make me ask again?”

Tony felt the bottle against his hand, slick with condensation. “It’s, uh.”

Banner blinked.

Tony took a step forward. A step away from Banner, that turned him towards the glassboard. “I’ve been working on this idea for a patch to top off adrenaline and cortisol in the field.”

“Top off adrenaline and cortisol?”

“Before it induces combat stress reaction.”

Banner took a sip of his beer. “To maximise combat time for individual soldiers?”

Tony shook his head. “Not necessarily let them fight longer. Just under more stressful conditions without having the disorganisation of a stress reaction.”

“Huh,” Banner said. “And how do you do that?”

“Drugs that interfere with the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, narcotics and other psychoactive drugs. Modulators of protein synthesis.”

Banner laughed. “Well, yeah.” He took a couple of steps forward, bringing him into Tony’s peripheral vision. “But this looks like something new.”

Tony nodded. “I’m tweaking a combination of propranolol, ketamine, osanetant and anisomycin. Trying to create an isotope that will allow for steady release over time.”

Banner frowned. “Throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks?”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “It’s my process.”

Banner put his beer down on the workbench. Picked up the copy of Judith Herman’s _Trauma and Recovery_ that Tony had left there. Looked at his copy of _The Body Keeps the Score_ , stuffed with page flags.

“I thought these were both pretty good,” Banner said. “What did you think?”

Tony shrugged, chest tight. His throat felt full. “Sure.”

“This compound you’re making—.“ Banner hesitated. “It will let people with PTSD just carry on through triggers, right?”

Tony gripped his beer. It was cold against his palm. “I guess.”

“You guess?” Banner sounded mildly disbelieving. “Tony, I’m no poster child for processing trauma in a healthy way, but I don’t know that engineering a brake for your own nervous system is the way to do it.”

He felt, dimly, a small bubble of anger grow and pop somewhere deep inside him. His fingers were wet and cold. Every part of him ached. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Banner took a small step towards him, and Tony leaned away. Looked away.

Banner huffed, irritated with himself. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” The taste of the beer in his mouth was metallic. It was making him feel sick. “It’s what there is.”

Banner was still. Tony could almost hear his mind turning over, searching for something to say. They didn’t talk like this, not really. “Everyone here has their shit,” Banner said. “You could try letting someone in.”

Tony was silent.

“We’re both members of the Bad Dad club, you know? If you want to talk about it, about anything—,“ he trailed off.

Tony wrapped his arms around himself. Felt the warmth of his arms against his stomach and chest. Felt the strength in his shoulders with the tips of his fingers. “Thanks.”

“I mean it.” The sincerity in Banner’s voice pinged against his chest, and fizzed along his arms.

“I know you do. It’s not that I don’t trust you with me.” Tony slid his hands down his back, felt the backs of his arms. “I just—“.

“Okay if I touch you?” Banner sounded uncertain. “Okay if I pat you on the back.”

“Okay,” he said, and Banner came closer. Patted him, slowly and almost gingerly, with his palm. He could smell Banner’s cologne, and the faintest hint of the non-alcoholic beer.

Banner had worked alongside him. Had brought him cups of coffee, and pieces of fruit, and nudged him away from the whisky bottle. Had seen through his bullshit, and stepped around Tony’s sore spots. Had made the awkward offer even though he probably didn’t want to peel off his own skin either.

He cleared his throat. “Your father—“ Banner’s face stiffened. “Did he ever, uh—“ He couldn’t think of a single set of words that he could end the sentence with that weren’t wholly inadequate to the task. “Touch you?”

Banner shook his head, and Tony felt a wave of relief. “Not like that.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “He, um, watched a lot of porn. Showed it to me when my Mom was out. Talked to me about sex. Wanted me to be a _man_.”

Tony had never so much as heard a description of Banner’s house, and didn’t really have the detail to flesh out the picture, but he could imagine Bruce, little and confused, bigger and ashamed, while his dad said things, _showed_ _him things,_ that he didn’t want to see or know.

Banner _hate_ _d_ porn, and now he knew why. It could have been worse, but it was bad enough, and Tony felt a little like his breath had been stolen. “Bruce—“

Banner unfolded his arms, slid his hands into his pockets. “I should—“

Tony caught his eye, stepped carefully into his space. “Bruce,” he said, again, and if he could have pushed the words past the lump in his throat then he would have said more.

He telegraphed the hug, watching for Banner to stiffen, or get the look on his face Tony had when he couldn’t bear people’s hands on him, but Banner just stood there, and Tony put his arms around him, not too tight. Banner didn’t move. He kept his hands in his pockets, didn’t hold Tony still. It was just about okay.

 

**/6/ December, New York**

“Come in.”

Tony looked at the holly wreath on Coulson’s office door for a fraction of a second more than was polite before turning the handle and going in.

Coulson looked up from his piles of paperwork and smiled his mildest smile. “Thanks for making the time.”

“Sure,” said Tony, and stood with his fingertips resting on the back of one of the chairs that sat in front of Coulson’s desk. He hadn’t made the time, was the thing. Since the email reminder of their quarterly meeting had landed in his inbox he had been using every last ounce of his determination to avoid standing here in this room. Somehow, the other meetings that were supposed to render him unavailable had melted away, the diplomatic snarl-ups had become detangled, and the manufacturing snafus had been fixed without him setting a foot outside Stark Tower. Coulson, it would seem, had outplayed him.

“Sit down,” Coulson said, and it wasn’t quite an order.

“I’m okay,” said Tony. “Need to get back to the lab in a minute.”

“Tony,” said Coulson. “This is going to take a while. Sit down.”

“I’m fine,” said Tony, and tapped his fingers on the back of the chair. “Great view you have from up here. I mean, not as good as mine—”

Coulson looked at him, assessing. “Do you not feel safe sitting down?”

“Safe?” Tony raised one eyebrow. “Have you weaponised the chair? Installed a chute to a pit of vipers underneath?”

“Emotionally safe,” said Coulson. “Secure.”

Coulson’s words landed somewhere in his gut. He felt a flush along his arms.  “I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s okay.” Coulson looked at him, unblinking, with the mild smile still in place. “If you feel safe then sit down.”

He sat. The chair was covered in cloth. Rough, with little bobbles. _Bouclé,_ his brain supplied, and he rested his arms on the oak arms of the chair, varnished to a shine. He watched while Coulson selected a file from the pile of identical folders on his desk with unerring precision. There was a smudge of machine oil on the knee of his jeans, but Coulson was the type of immaculate that could make even the most sharply dressed man feel faintly scruffy.

“Per our agreement, I get reports on what you’re working on. Updates from JARVIS about your wellbeing,” Coulson said, without preamble. “We agreed that Iron Man could be part of the Avengers for as long as you were compliant with the very, _very_ lax set of constraints that circumscribed us being here at Stark Tower.”

He paused, elbows on his desk and fingers steepled, and Tony let the silence eddy around them. Looked high enough on Coulson’s cheekbone to give the impression that he was meeting his eye.

“I don’t believe that you are compliant, Tony,” he said. “I’m benching you until you are. If your non-compliance lasts for longer than two calendar months then we may have to pull operations away from Stark Tower completely.”

“Non-compliant?” Tony said, feeling the pinch of loss at the idea of Stark Tower returning to its former self. “Do you mean the tech I’ve been making? It’s a little unorthodox—“

“No,” Coulson cut him off. He opened the file. Tony could just see a neat pile of printed off-white paper, unstapled with edges aligned. “Well, not directly,” he amended, turning three pages. “Part 5, section double-eye of our agreement stipulates that you have to ensure your own basic physical and mental wellbeing.”

“And?” Tony said. “I aced my last medical. I eat okay. I drink— less.”

Coulson nodded. “And I don’t underestimate how hard it is for you to see a doctor regularly, and to moderate your alcohol intake.” He paused. “But I’m talking about the fact that you have a severe case of undiagnosed PTSD, and putting you in the field is a risk that this unit cannot bear.”

Tony felt the muscles in his back tighten, was dimly aware of his fingers gripping the sides of the smooth wooden arms of the chair. “It’s not undiagnosed.”

Coulson’s eyebrows went up, and Tony felt a small thrill of victory. “It’s not in your personnel file.”

Tony shook his head. “I took it out.”

“You took it out?” Coulson’s eyes narrowed. “We’re pretty good at finding information that people don’t want us to find.”

“But I’m better,” Tony said, simply. Better at hiding. Better at obfuscating the truth like smearing Vaseline on a lens.

Coulson collected himself, tidied the unguarded look from his face. “And what was the prescribed treatment?”

Tony flexed his fingers. “Ativan. Klonopin. Xanax. Talk therapy.”

“And?”

“I pretty much resent the hell out of this conversation.” Tony stood up. “I’m not a danger to the team. I’m not even a danger to myself.”

“Last month at lunch?” Coulson said, and it wouldn’t have been possible to find a trace of pity on his face with an electron microscope. “When Captain Rogers and I were talking about Abu Ghraib?”

“What about it?” Tony said, roughly. “If people aren’t disturbed by that sick fucking shit then I don’t even want to know them.”

“You know as much about dissociation as I do.” Coulson tilted his head almost imperceptibly to one side. “I’m not even sure you were there, Tony.”

Tony slid two fingers into the pockets of his jeans. Pulled out a stick of gum and unwrapped it. Put it in his mouth.

“I think you need to do some work to process and integrate what happened to you in Afghanistan,” Coulson continued. “I think you need to start the talk therapy that you were prescribed.”

Tony chewed his gum, and felt the pressure through his jaw and cheekbones as his teeth came together. The mint faded too quickly. It always did.

“I can’t,” he said, and sat down. It came out more desperate than he’d intended. He took a tissue from the dispenser on Coulson’s desk and spat his chewing gum into it.

“I think you can,” Coulson said.

“Honest to G-d,” said Tony. “I really can’t.”

“Why?”

“There’s too much,” said Tony. “Too much—. Shit.” He trailed off. He could feel a fizzing at his temples, which was one of the sensations that happened just before the world spiralled inexorably out of focus.

“Come on, Tony.” Coulson leaned forward. “You know how to catch this. What can you feel?”

Tony brushed his fingertips over the arms of the chair. “Smooth. Hard. Cool. There’s something sticky. A little rough patch of sticky.”

“And smell?”

Tony breathed in slowly through his nose. “Uh, cologne.” He frowned. “Cleaning products. Maybe shoe polish?”

“Good.”

“I’m okay.” Tony took another shaky breath. Steadied himself, his shoulders coming down. His stomach felt empty, as though a tide had gone out. “I’m fine.”

“You were telling me why talk therapy is out of the question.” Coulson looked unruffled, as though he had ten of these conversations before breakfast. Maybe he did.

“I can’t spare the time.” Tony paused, trying to organise his thoughts. “It takes too long to process trauma. I have too many different experiences to deal with. It’s too big a chunk out of my life.”

“You’re saying that it’s about scheduling?” Coulson sounded doubtful.

“No,” said Tony. There wasn’t any point in stepping around this anymore. “More that I don’t know if this will induce a flat spin for my brain that I can’t pull out of.”

“You’re in ten kinds of pain right now.” Coulson looked at him, assessing. “You’ve been bumping on this since the session on rape as an interrogation tool back in July.”

Tony nodded, throat tight. His eyes were locked on his knees, his jeans, the spot of grease. He hated that Coulson knew what happened in Afghanistan, but knew with crystal clarity that he couldn’t have forced the words to describe it past the ache in his throat.

“I’ve seen tens of soldiers, men and women both, work to process rape that happened in the field, in captivity, in interrogation,” Coulson said. “I’ve never let anyone go under yet.”

“Maybe I’m just more broken?” Tony choked. It was out, the thing that curled in his gut, in his chest. The thing that had stopped him every time he’d started looking for specialists, for someone, for some _thing_ to make this not feel like it did.

“I don’t think so,” Coulson said, assessing. “Rape is designed to hurt this much, Tony. It’s supposed to strip you down, and cover you in shame. That’s why they do it. You’re not deficient for feeling what humans feel when rape happens to them.”

“It feels fucking terrible,” said Tony. He felt the pressure behind his eyes of tears that wouldn’t come.

“I know,” Coulson said, and there was something about his emphasis that landed wrong. Or right.

Tony’s head jerked up. “You know?” His eyes felt hot. “ _You_ know?”

“Yes.” Coulson’s face was serious. “I was raped by captors when I was on a mission.” He considered, and he was so unruffled that a bolt of envy spiked Tony. “I wouldn’t share that with a subordinate, but you’re not exactly my subordinate.”

Tony felt like he’d been punched in the chest. He’d seen Coulson hold down a position with not much more than a couple of guns, some body armour, and implacability, but he didn’t know that he had the emotional courage of a lion.

“Fuck.”

“Well, not exactly,” Coulson said, and he smiled slow and patient. “I mean, sorting out the differences between those two things is part of what you’ll cover in therapy.”

Tony’s mouth fell open. “Did you just make a rape joke?”

It was the same room that he’d sat in tens of times. It was the same birch desk and lime green lamp and pencils in a row lined up by length. He felt as though the sensible grey carpeting was tipping up under his feet, like a boat foundering in slow motion.  

“I know that this is all you can see right now, but this isn’t all you are.” Coulson looked, in the light of the lamp, infinitely kind.  He opened his desk drawer. “You’re going to do a lot of work to make this part of you, instead of everything. You’re going to create some coping mechanisms that aren’t climbing into a bottle, or drugging yourself to keep going through panic. Knowing you, one of those tools is going to be humour. I’m already shuddering to imagine the choice set of jokes you’re going to be telling once you’ve done some of the work you need to do.”

He pulled a battered address book out his drawer. Opened it, and took out a business card that was scuffed around the edges.

“Call her,” he said, handing it over. “Or don’t, but we can’t stay here if you won’t call her or someone like her.”

Tony took the card. Looked down at it. The words on the card blurred. “I will,” he said. “I will.”

“I swear,” said Coulson, “that you’re going to be okay.”

For the first time since _cave, dust, rocks, pain, vomit_ Tony thought that there might be an outside chance that that could possibly be true.

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: 
> 
> This fic explores the response of Tony Stark to having been sexually assaulted while held captive in Afghanistan. He has a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, and is seen dissociating. 
> 
> There are non-explicit references to torture (off screen), rape (off screen), chid abuse (in the form of showing children pornography, off screen) and several characters (Phil Coulson, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark) dislose that they have experienced rape or child sexual abuse. 
> 
> This fic briefly mentions self-medicating through alcohol, and possible ambiguous prescription drug misuse. 
> 
> Characters are shown surviving. 
> 
> If you would like any further details about content, then please do not hesitate to ask.


End file.
